you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why,
and How?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an
answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones
of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his
spiritual Endeavor lies before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed
say we, "do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The
great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is
properly the _only_ object that interests man:' thus I too have noted,
that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but
Biography or Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical
(_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most universally
profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of
distinguished individuals.

"By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continues he, with
an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh, or
some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, "by this time
you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of
Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment
enough. Such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and
brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the
mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which
manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had
Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear
drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, in rapture and tears,
clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long
burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give
inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport
himself when in Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and
subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has